Latest trends in the world of alternative investments

World Alternative Investment Summit Canada 2016

By Nita Balani

Niagara Fallsview Hotel was the backdrop for the recently held World Alternative Investment Summit Canada (WAISC) 2016. The conference kicked off with a spectacular fire and water display at the newly opened opulent and luxurious lounge R5 at the hotel. The reception provided the attendees to mingle with the key industry players who came from the US, UK, Bermuda, amongst other global locations. Radius Financial brand always presents top notch conferences and has been hosting the WAISC successfully for 15 years .The conference addresses key challenges for the financial industry amidst ever increasing demand for more transparency, more regulatory requirements and fast changing technological advances. The kick-off presentation on Blockchain technology, bit coins and crypto currencies and its limitless potential for use in institutional investing and presented by author William Mougayer was extremely interesting and timely. The new technology also had a dedicated panel on the subject and led to a lively discussion and endless possibilities for applications to the financial industry.

Some of the key participants included Dennis Mitchell of Sprott Asset Management, Peter Lacasse Director at FundSERV, Tom Goodwin FTSE Russell, Geoffrey King of Cisco Systems Canada, Deborah Fuhr Founder of ETFGI (England),  Kevin Harris of Roubini Global Economics, Justin Oliver of BMO Global Asset Management – ETF , Thomas Caldwell of Caldwell Securities, Jamie Wise Founder of BUZZ Indexes, Dennis MacPherson of SGGG Fund Services, and other key industry partners like KPMG, Centurion Asset Management, Matco Financial amongst many others. The panel discussion topics were extremely relevant and brought on lively question and answer sessions. Some of the key panels dealt with topics like platform traded funds, tax trends and issues and opportunities impacting the asset management industry, hot regulation topics pertaining to Canadian securities regulatory regime, advance in ETF industry trading solutions for MFDA dealers and how technology has impacted the financial regulatory world with the introduction of eDocs service and e-signatures. The summit also brought Bermuda to Niagara by including a panel on Offshore Funds Structuring, Formation and Operations with tax and legal implications for Canadian investors and corporations. This year also marks the first time the conference is going global with its first summit scheduled later this month in Bermuda. The conference also showcased The Bermuda Business Development Agency to facilitate business between Canada and Bermuda. According to Ms.Tonesan Amissah, Partner with Appleby Bermuda, “Bermuda has the reputation of being a responsible, stable tax-neutral business environment with all the top-of-the-line financial and legal services available for large corporations to do business in a safe and secure environment.” CRA also has made it easier for Canadian corporations to do business with Bermuda.
One of the highlights of the conference was an opportunity to meet CEO and Founder of Toronto’s second stock exchange, Aequitas NEO Exchange, Jos Schmitt who spoke on the current investment landscape and investing trends. The dapper financial guru took on the TSX and went where no man had dared to venture by starting an alternative stock exchange challenging the monopoly of the Toronto Stock Exchange. He said “it was about time somebody came up with some competition to the TSX and investors had an alternate stock exchange with rules that actually helped the investors and corporations”. In fact many attendees were surprised to learn that a small company had taken on the TSX giant and started the exchange last year. Since the creation of NEO in 2015, the TSX has already reduced some of their working fees amongst making other beneficial changes for the Canadian players.
The founder of Recovery Partners, Alex Jureshevski, presented “Brexit…what’s Nexit? “ an extremely well-researched and detailed outlook on what the implications of Brexit are and how it will play out in the near and long-term. The outlook was all gloom and doom backed with solid research and data.

But not all was dull and boring and purely learning. The well-known Wall Street special journalist and author, Gregory Zuckerman shared his experiences through his speech aptly titled “Why the Experts Keep Getting it Wrong….And Outsiders Keep Getting it Right” and was on hand to personally autograph his books.

The famous creative writer of The Simpsons, Mike Reiss who came down from USA and spoke about how the comic series took the world by storm and has had the staying power for the last 28 years and still running. There were many business lessons to learn and many anecdotes with clips from the series and attendees were treated to a stand-up comedy to end the conference on a lighter note. We congratulate Radius Financial Education for the close of another successful edition!